John Donne and baroque allegory: the aesthetics of fragmentation 9781107195806, 9781108164337, 9781316646946, 1107195802, 1316646947

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Title page......Page 5
Copyright information......Page 6
Dedication......Page 7
Table of contents......Page 9
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Benjamin, Donne, and the Era of the Baroque......Page 11
Walter Benjamin’s Presentism......Page 14
Donne’s Afterlife......Page 18
T. S. Eliot: Presentist Critic......Page 20
Benjamin’s Correction of the Anglo-American Modernist Donne......Page 23
The Baroque and Donne......Page 26
The Baroque in Anglo-American Literary Studies......Page 27
The Baroque Comes to England and America......Page 29
The Baroque in Donne Studies......Page 36
Changing Tides?......Page 39
A Postmodernist Donne......Page 42
Multiple Postmodernist Donnes......Page 45
Aesthetic Paradigms and Critical Paradigms......Page 49
Some Current Work on Donne......Page 51
Moving on in Donne Studies......Page 54
Benjamin, Baroque Allegory, and the Postmodernist Donne......Page 58
Notes......Page 62
2 The Anniversaries as Baroque Allegory: Mourning, Idealization, and the Resistance to Unity......Page 74
Situating The Anniversaries......Page 75
The First Anniversary......Page 76
The Progres of the Soule......Page 88
The Resistance to Unity of The Anniversaries......Page 95
Notes......Page 98
3 Donne’s The Songs and Sonets: Living in a Fragmented World......Page 104
The Structure of Baroque Allegory......Page 106
Spleen et Idéale in The Songs and Sonets......Page 107
The World in Decay: Poems of Mourning in The Songs and Sonets......Page 108
The Empty World of the Libertine Poems......Page 113
Love between Ovid and Petrarch......Page 120
Irony or Ambiguity?......Page 122
The Counter-Utopia of the Songs and Sonets......Page 128
Notes......Page 139
4 Allegorical Objects and Metaphysical Conceits: Thinking about Donne’s Tropes with Benjamin......Page 147
What Was a Metaphysical Conceit?......Page 148
Gracián’s and Tesauro’s Treatises on Wit......Page 153
The Baroque Image and the Conceit......Page 154
Conceits, Baroque Images, and Allegorical Tropes......Page 156
‘‘The Extasie’’: Allegorical Form and Technique......Page 165
Two-in-One and the Baroque......Page 172
Notes......Page 173
5 The Metaphysics of Correspondence or a Fragmented World?: Baroque Poetics in the Seventeenth Century......Page 180
The Idea of a Metaphysics of Correspondence......Page 182
The Politics of the Metaphysics of Correspondences......Page 186
Gracián’s Correspondences......Page 187
Benjamin and Gracián......Page 189
The Abandonment of the Metaphysics of Correspondences......Page 192
Benjamin’s Theory of Mimesis and Language......Page 196
Fallen Language......Page 198
Baudelaire and Donne......Page 201
The Mimetic Faculty......Page 203
Baroque Structures in the Religious Poems......Page 205
Notes......Page 211
Conclusion......Page 217
Literature and Philosophy......Page 219
Notes......Page 220
Bibliography......Page 222
Index......Page 236